Lenovo, the world’s third-largest PC manufacturer, announced this morning that it will start selling some of its ThinkPad laptops preloaded with Linux instead of Windows.
The new Lenovo laptops will use Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 distribution. The machines won’t hit the market until later this year, but they will be available direct to consumers in addition to business customers. Lenovo made the announcement at this week’s LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco, Reuters is reporting.
The first ThinkPad being offered with SLED 10 pre-installed is the ThinkPad T60p, one of Lenovo’s core business-oriented machines. It boasts an Intel CoreDuo 2GHz processor and can handle up to 2GB of memory. The graphics capability is nothing to sneeze at, either: the T60p has an ATI FireGL V5200. Lenovo will offer software and hardware support, but Novell will manage software updates. The company hasn’t announced any pricing details for the new machines.
With Dell already selling PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed, two of the top three computer makers in the world are now offering Linux as a pre-built option. And the Linux option appears to be spreading, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said last month that he is negotiating with “other large PC makers” interested in offering machines with Ubuntu.
